Race still a consideration in Worcester school transfer policy

Jacqueline Reis TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Published Thursday May 16, 2013 at 10:00 pm

Updated Thursday May 16, 2013 at 10:48 pm

The portion of the city's student transfer policy that includes race will stay in place for another academic year after School Committee members said tonight that they were not ready to remove it from the district's policy handbook.

A subcommittee discussed the issue May 7 and was prepared to take the voluntary de-isolation policy out of the handbook, but after objections from other committee members and Democratic activist David Coyne, they decided to take a year to research and deliberate the policy.

Worcester signed a voluntary de-isolation agreement with the state in 1989 that requires the student body at each of the city's elementary schools to have a minority population that is within 15 percent of the school system's overall elementary minority population. If a school's population is persistently outside those goals, students seeking to transfer in or out could be refused based on whether they were helping to balance the school racially.

The majority of the school system's students are “minorities,” and no one racial group makes up more than 50 percent of the student body. Latinos are the largest group with 38.1 percent.

In addition, the state has not enforced the de-isolation agreement for years; a June 2007 Supreme Court ruling restricted how districts can use race in school assignments.

Even one of the state's old incentives has disappeared. School Committee member Brian A. O'Connell said the district should not abandon the agreement, because it had received 90 percent state reimbursement on building projects in the agreement's early years. However, the state has since changed its school building process.

While the student body and the state's position appear to have changed, racial isolation has persisted. In the 2010-11 school year, for instance, more than a third of schools were out of compliance with the policy.

By default, students are assigned to their neighborhood school, but they can also ask to go to a magnet school or other school outside their geographic area. But the process is not balancing out.

“Unless we hold one person back or force another to go, the voluntary process, because of the shifting demographics, is not getting us there,” Superintendent Melinda J. Boone said in an interview.

With increasing enrollment, the district also has fewer seats open to transfer students.

Mr. O'Connell said it would be “a violation of a moral obligation” to abandon the policy, while committee member Tracy O'Connell Novick said, “We do have majority white schools in this district … and we're not working on it.”

Committee member Jack L. Foley noted that “we have a handbook that really is not being followed.”

Mr. Coyne said the district has the same ability to de-isolate its schools as it did in 1989; it's just a different group in the minority.

While the transfer policy will be held for a year, the committee will hear more in two weeks about proposals to eliminate the suspension as a penalty for students who are truant or who have demerits. The district does not use demerits, but some committee member Dianna Biancheria and Mr. O'Connell spoke in favor of keeping both policies.

Committee member John F. Monfredo, meanwhile, said suspensions should be reserved for safety issues.

Mayor Joseph M. Petty, chairman of the committee, said the discussion about changes to the handbook was unlike anything he had seen in 16 years on the City Council and could have been averted with a simple phone call to subcommittee Chairman John F. Monfredo to request the report go back to subcommittee.